


Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

by SeeEmRunning



Series: Companion Sam [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Daleks - Freeform, Gen, Lupine Wavelength Hemovariform, Poverty, Werewolf, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 09:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeEmRunning/pseuds/SeeEmRunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Samuel Winchester meets a man named John Smith and they fight together in glorious battle.</p><p>Or, Sam's AP chem teacher is more than he appears. When Sam saves him from a werewolf, they forge a friendship that is tested when the school is taken hostage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> When I first started writing this (ten days ago! How did I get this done/proofread/edited so fast?!), I was partway through Ten. Now I'm almost finished with Eleven. So I'm not entirely sure which Doctor I'm writing, but he's a mix of the two with some Nine thrown in. So let's call it a future-fic and be done with it. :P

Sixteen-year-old Sam Winchester trudged back to his shitty house, covered in graveyard dirt and ash. He'd been squatting in the same place for going on four years now, ever since his father and older brother, Dean, had left for a hunt. 

Somewhere in the interim, he'd stopped expecting them to come back.

He survived the same way hundreds of other kids did - namely, any way he could. He stole, he sold himself, he begged and he panhandled. The soup kitchen was usually willing to help him out, especially if he spent a few hours dishing out food for the others, and the local churches let him pick through the clothes that were donated, so at least he was usually warm and fed. He was about ninety percent sure his school knew how he was scraping by, but since social services was so overworked and he wasn't actively dying, they turned a blind eye fairly willingly. He'd spent his childhood learning how to survive and now he was spending his adolescence putting the knowledge to use. 

He threw the shovel into the optimistically-named garden and traipsed up the rotting stairs. One of these days they were going to fall right out from under him. The door had to be hauled open - when he got a chance, he'd have to go by the hardware store and pick up a few 47-cent hinges, cheaper than the oil the existing hinges badly needed - and the floor was scratched from decades of neglect. His bedding was coats he'd grown out of and a blanket from the thrift shop.

He checked the envelope with his cash. He was down to fifteen dollars, nowhere near enough to get through the rest of the holiday break. He shoved it back into its hiding place underneath the loose floorboard under the sweater that served as his pillow and laid down, pulling the coats and blankets over him. The house hadn't had electricity - or, for that matter, running water - since before they'd moved in, and the end of December was always freezing.

Not for the first time, he considered just stopping. But no, he couldn't do that. He had to stick around and deal with the stupid shit that kept trying to kill people the way it had his family.

Damn it.  
***  
Monday morning found him trying desperately to stay awake in the chemistry room. The other students unintentionally helped with that, yelling as they were about their Christmases and Hannukahs and Kwanzaas and whatever other holidays they celebrated. Helping too was the painful twinge in his ass whenever he moved.

Sam just sat and watched. He didn't really have many friends - he was too smart, too scrawny, too unlucky. Too _filthy._ So he picked seats in the back corners, where he could see the exits and the movements of everyone else, and he paid attention.

The new teacher walked in. He was British or something, Sam vaguely recalled from the whispers he'd heard about him in the spaces between first and second periods.

"So!" he said brightly, grinning at them all. He slammed his bag down on the table, the thud ringing loud in the now-silent room. "Chemistry! AP Chemistry, no less! What on Earth _possessed_ you lot?"

Sam watched as the other students exchanged wide-eyed looks. The man at the front of the room, dressed as he was in a brown suit, looked the part of a teacher, but he certainly wasn't _acting_ like one.

"I'm Dr. Smith, and I think we're going to start with something exciting," he continued, pulling something out of his bag. "I have here ordinary tap water and a half a gram of cesium. Let's see what happens, shall we?" He pulled the lid off the bowl and dropped in something Sam couldn't see from the back of the room.

The bowl shattered.

The other students started to scream and jump. Sam made an aborted movement toward the knife strapped to his leg - thank god for schools without metal detectors - but forced himself to calm down. Smith was still grinning maniacally at them all, so Sam just sat back and watched the chaos.

Smith swept up the broken plastic and laid down a few paper towels to soak up the water before he returned to the chalkboard and started to write. "So! Now that I have your attention, let's talk valences."

Class was a bit of a letdown after that. When they were released, it was in a flurry of whispers, everyone talking about the new teacher and how he'd destroyed the bowl like it was nothing. Sam trailed behind, listening the way he always did.

Over the next weeks, it became very clear to Sam that Dr. Smith wasn't normal. Far beyond the British accent, Smith seemed to be fascinated by mundane objects nobody else would have blinked an eye at, and he occasionally said the same word repeatedly, like he didn't realize he was doing it. In the middle of February, he said "quark" eighteen times in a row and peered at them, apparently mystified, when they didn't copy it down.

That was also when Smith started watching Sam more closely - during lunch, during class, during study hall - and Sam tried to shrug it off. If he'd known where Smith lived, he might have tried to break in and learn more about him that way, but when he hacked into the employee records he didn't have an address listed anywhere. At the end of the month he seemed more distracted, which Sam almost missed - some poor bastard had had his heart ripped right out of his chest, which _screamed_ werewolf to everyone who knew anything and occupied most of Sam's thoughts - but by the beginning of March he was back to normal.

It wasn't until the end of April, when they were gearing up for their AP exams, that things came to a head. It was nearing two in the morning and it was a full moon; Sam had been hunting the werewolf in the wrong part of town the month before, and the damn thing had gorged itself on a couple and their kid. He'd been searching in the rich part of town, where the first victim was found, but the couple had been in Sam's neighborhood. The number of victims meant the werewolf had had more time, which told him the werewolf lived closer to Sam than he would have liked.

 _Probably closer than the werewolf would like, too,_ he reflected, scanning the street with one hand on the silver knife he'd had since he was nine.

There, at last - movement, in the trees where the road and town ended. Sam started running. He caught up with it and yelled to get its attention. It came at him, claws out and snarling, and he stabbed but missed when it turned, catching the beast on the snout instead of in the heart. It howled in pain and ran.

 _Cowardly werewolf_ , Sam thought with cool detachment as he followed. _Never seen that before._

Sam slowed, listening hard. The damn thing was far faster than a human, even one as trained as Sam, and had outpaced him easily. Now, to find him, Sam had to rely on tracking - not his strong suit.

But it was made easy tonight: someone yelled, "Get away from me!" Sam ran toward the shouting, keeping an eye out for the wolf in case that wasn't what the man was yelling about. He needn't have worried - he burst into a clearing to see a man frantically climbing a tree, the werewolf growling and trying to climb after him.

"No you _don't!_ " Sam roared, tackling the thing in the side. His knife flashed once in the pale moonlight, reflecting the thing's wide golden eyes, and buried itself to the hilt in its chest.

"Did it bite you?" Sam called, attention still on the wolf. He never looked away when this happened, not once; he felt it somehow disrespectful. The body beneath him shifted and morphed, and Sam gulped down the nausea when the features revealed the boy who sat behind him in his study hall.

"What-" the boy whispered.

Sam took his hand. "It's okay," he said gently. "It's okay, Ronnie."

"I'm tired."

"So go to sleep." Sam squeezed his hand once before Ronnie's eyes fluttered closed.

Sam shut his own eyes and gulped down the horror and sorrow.

"Sam," someone said from behind him.

He whirled, another knife gripped in his hand, to see-

"Dr. Smith," he blurted. "I - uh, I can-"

"Sam Winchester, you just killed a lupine wavelength hemovariform."

"A - wait, _what?_ Lupine - you _know_ about them?"

"Oh, I know all about them. How do _you_ know? No, wait, let's get somewhere more comfortable."

"I have to burn the body first."

"Burn it? Why would you burn it?"

Sam frowned at him. "It can spread," he said. "When the body decomposes, the - whatever you want to call it, virus or mutation or whatever, it's still there and it can spread. It can't be buried."

"Oh, yes, of course. You do this often?"

"When I need to. Mostly I deal with...other things. Werewolves are kinda rare, as you know."

"Oh, I know." Smith smiled. "I know indeed."

"So who are you, really?" Sam asked suspiciously.

"I'm the Doctor!"

"Yeah, Doctor Smith, right," Sam said impatiently. "But are you a hunter?"

"A hun- oh, no. Not a hunter. Why, are you?"

Sam pulled the knife out of Ronnie's chest with a sickening squelch. "Thought that was kind of obvious."

"You're, what, sixteen?"

"And? Come on, we should burn this before someone comes to see what all the fuss was about."

"Where do you propose we - er - burn it?" Smith asked, nose wrinkling in distaste.

"I got a pit in my backyard. It's not much, but I want to get this one burned before his parents realize he's gone."

"His _parents?_ " Smith got a good look at the kid at Sam's feet. "Good lord, is he really that young?"

"He's fourteen," Sam said grimly. "His name's Ronnie Hyatt. He sits - sat - behind me in study hall."

"What about his parents? Don't they get closure?"

"What closure can be had?" Sam shot back. "Sorry your kid ran off? Sorry he was a werewolf? Sorry he killed four people in two months because some _thing_ took him over? No. If they see the body, they're going to want justice. That comes back on me. I'm _sixteen_ \- that's old enough for the death penalty in this state and too young to be considered anything other than broken. So no, I'm not going to die because of shitty luck and me being the only goddamn hunter in the miserable, god-forsaken hellhole."

"I don’t think-"

"Don't lecture me, Smith. This isn't chemistry class, and this won't be the first time I've burned a body. If I had a choice, this wouldn't have even happened. But it did, and now I have to deal with it. Go home."

"No. I'm coming with you."

"Then don't draw attention to us." Sam bent down and got Ronnie over his back in an approximation of a fireman's carry.

Five minutes into the walk, when Sam had gotten his temper back under control, Smith asked, "So, your family. They in this, too?"

Sam snorted. "Don't have any family. They're all dead."

"How do you pay the bills, then? Walk dogs? Mow lawns?"

"Oh, yes, that gets me enough money," Sam said sarcastically.

"So how do you live, then?"

"I squat in an abandoned house with no electricity or water supply," Sam said matter-of-factly. "Been there four years now. What about you? School records don't have an address on file."

"You - did you really-"

"Hack into the school's information system when I noticed you were watching me? Yep."

"You little twerp."

"So?"

"Blue police box from the 1980s that's bigger on the inside."

"Spell?"

"Nope. Science."

"Yeah, because science has advanced _that_ far." Sam snorted. "Look, there it is. Let's get inside the fence."

Smith held the gate open for him. "So, just curious. How'd your family die?"

"You start all conversations like that?" Sam snarked, dropping Ronnie's body into the pit he'd dug six feet inside the fence for just that purpose. "I have to get fire stuff."

Smith followed him inside. "So you weren't actually joking about squatting," he said when he saw the bare interior.

"Nope." Sam grabbed the lighter fluid, matches, and salt from the counter of the gutted kitchen. "But I get by."

Smith was silent until he started shaking salt over the body. "Oi! What's that for?"

"Purification. Without it, Ronnie's soul could hang around and haunt the place. I'm not real interested in being thrown through yet _another_ wall by a pissed-off spirit, thanks."

"Ghosts aren't real," Smith scoffed.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Let's go with that. So seriously, what the hell _are_ you? Police box, whatever that is, that's bigger on the inside, know about werewolves but not ghosts."

"I'm a time traveller," he said, drawing himself up.

Sam eyed him as he struck the match. "Which means?"

Ronnie's body went up with the _flumph_ typical of lighter fluid. Sam held his hands out over the dancing flames to warm them up.

Smith chose not to comment on his insensitivity, for which Sam was grateful. "It means I travel through time."

 _No shit, Sherlock,_ he thought, but all he said was, "Impossible."

"Not impossible at all," Smith said. "Some Huon particles, a bit of luck, and I'm good to go."

"Right," Sam said dryly, unconvinced. "Anyway. It's a Wednesday, which means school in about" - he checked his watch in the firelight - "five hours. I don't know about you, but I need to sleep."

"You're going to leave the fire alone for five hours?"

"Nope. I'm going to get a blanket and sleep out here."

As if to spite him, the clouds that had been threatening all day chose that moment to start drizzling. Sam winced, not looking forward to a night spent outside in cold damp.

"Rain's only gonna get worse," Smith said.

"Not like I can leave the fire alone."

"I'll stay with it."

"You need to sleep, too."

"No, I don't." Smith smiled at him. "Go on, then. Go sleep."

"Not leaving you out here alone," Sam said flatly. "I'll be back."

In the time it took him to run inside, dismantle his bed, and pull out a blanket from the pile, something very important occurred to him. He stood and turned, ready to confront Smith in the yard only to find him standing in the empty doorframe.

"Is this - your _bed?_ " he said, sounding repulsed.

"So what if it is?" Sam asked defiantly. "Riddle me this, Smith - if you can travel through time, anywhere you want to go, why spend a semester as a high school teacher?"

"Oh, bright young minds, all that," Smith said.

Sam didn't believe him for a second. "C'mon. Let's see if the fire's caught anything important while you followed me."

"I doubt it." Smith led the way out to the backyard - Sam wasn't going to let him out of his sight, not again - and they both saw the fire was out.

"Well, _shit_ ," Sam said vehemently. "Let me get the matches again-"

"No, no, it's okay," Smith assured him, tugging on his arm. "Just look at it, go on. If you think it needs more fire, drop another match then."

Sam looked at him distrustfully but dutifully looked into the pit.

The ashy pit.

With no body.

"Where did it - what did you-"

"I can't stand it," the Doctor said, looking down his nose at him despite being Sam's equal in height. "The smell of it. The sight of the body. It was too small. I sped it up a bit, that's all."

"How?"

Smith smiled and removed something from his coat, holding it up - a little silver tube with a light on the end. "This."

Sam peered closer. "The hell is that, a pen?"

Smith looked offended. "It's not a pen, it's a sonic screwdriver!"

Sam frowned, running the words over in his head to make sure he hadn't misunderstood. "A - sonic...screwdriver? Why does the noise make it different?"

Smith grinned. "Neat, innit?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "So, seriously, what makes it so different? It's not even a screwdriver!"

"Oh, but it can be." Smith's grin got even wider.

Sam slumped and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. "Whatever, man."

"You're cold."

"It's forty degrees."

"And no heat."

"I got blankets," Sam said defensively. "I've slept in colder."

Smith winced. "Yeah, that's - does anyone _know?_ I mean, how you're living?"

"Probably. But I'm not starving to death, and I'm not dying from anything else, so they figure I'm doing all right. Social Services is overworked and underpaid and nobody can prove anything. It's all just...suspicion. And it's better this way."

"Why? How is it _better_ this way?"

"If I was in a home, you think I could take care of business? I wouldn't be able to help anyone. Out here, I can. And that's what matters."

"That's what _matters?_ " Smith repeated incredulously, suddenly angry. "Sam, you're living in a house with no heat in the dead of winter, no running water, no electricity, no money - and _killing things_ is what matters?"

"Saving people does!" Sam yelled at him, now angry himself. "You sweep in here, in your big old coat, you don't talk to me beyond class - you still haven't answered that, by the way, what the _hell_ are you doing teaching - and then you try to _lecture_ me about _my life_ , like I'm not the one living it!"

"You're right," Smith interrupted. "I don't know your life. But it's...different. Never met a hunter before, what's it like?"

Sam stared at him. "Big enough mood swing for you, there?" he snapped. "It's this. It's fighting and it's blood and it's killing and it's reminding myself that I do this for a _reason._ That's _all_ it is, Smith, this is _it!_ This is all my life is, and it's all it will ever _be!_ " Sam breathed heavy for a moment, then forced him to blow out a breath. "This is all there is for me, Smith. I'll be dead by twenty-five. What about you, you hunt, what's your life expectancy at?"

"Oh, Sam, I'm very old," he said solemnly. "But what's this nonsense, dead by twenty-five? You've got a good eighty years in you!"

"You think so?" Sam said. "You know about werewolves, so you must know about everything else I face on a regular basis. I'm damn surprised I’m not dead already, to be honest."

"How long've you been hunting, then? A year? Two?"

"First hunt, I was ten. When I was twelve, that was my first solo. Spirit - woman in white. Easiest hunt I've ever had. Yours?"

"Oh, I've never been on a hunt like that. I just go adventuring and deal with any problems that come up. But really though, ten, that's _young_."

Sam forced him temper back and exaggerated a yawn. "Look, not to be rude, but it's three in the morning and I've been up since four yesterday, so if you don't mind?"

"Oh, right! Yes, of course. You need sleep. Go on, then, in you go." Smith beamed at him.

"I'm not leaving you out here alone." Sam jerked his chin at the gate.

"What, you don't trust me?"

"Not with my life."

"Oh, fine. You _child._ "

"Yeah, thanks for noticing," Sam muttered, watching him leave.

It wasn't until Smith was gone that Sam resettled the blanket more securely around his shoulders and went back inside.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, Smith acted no differently during class, and Sam was relieved. In the light of day it was hard to believe he hadn't sent Smith running the way he had other civilians who had gotten in his way.

But Smith wasn't a civilian, was he? He did a good job acting like one, just as Sam did, but he wasn't. He watched for threats and addressed them, even if unconsciously. He was a soldier, maybe, or a contractor - but he was by no means a civilian.

Smith sat with Sam at lunch, though. "So," he said. "Hunter. Exciting."

Sam glared at him and hissed, " _Public._ "

"Oh, no one's paying attention to us," Smith scoffed.

"Still. Not here, and not now." Sam took a swig from his milk carton.

Smith made a face. "You're a funny little thing."

Sam rolled his eyes.  
***  
He was shaken from his homework-induced stupor by a knock on the door. He opened it to find Smith standing there.

"Food?" Smith offered, holding up a paper bag. It was dry, despite the pouring rain that had plastered the man's hair flat to his head.

"What?"

"Oh, come on. The school food over here couldn't feed a fly, let alone a growing boy!" Smith beamed at him.

"Are you bribing me for some reason?" Sam asked incredulously.

"No! No, of course not. Well, sort of, yeah."

"What for?"

"Stories."

"Stories?"

"Stories." 

"Of?"

"Everything! Oh, come on, Sam, you're a _hunter!_ You deal with the terrestrial things!"

"As opposed to the extraterrestrial things?" Sam shot at him.

"Oh, yes. Extraterrestrial's my department."

Sam eyed him a moment, but there was no denying the food smelled good. "Oh, all right, then. Sorry, I don't have furniture - unless you want to go back to wherever you live, we'll have to sit on the floor."

"Floor's fine with me."

When they were settled and Sam had grabbed the plates and silverware he had, Smith pointed a fork at him. "So. Talk."

"About?"

"Well I don’t know, do I?" He looked at him expectantly.

Sam's mind scrambled for a moment. "Tell you what. Story for story. You say you hunt aliens - you're going to prove it."

"How?"

Sam smirked. "Oh, come on, I know how difficult it is to keep a dozen different lies straight. Contradictions, Smith."

"Oh, that's brilliant, that is. Most people just ask to see my spaceship."

"What, you've got a spaceship?"

"I do, yeah."

"And you tell every teenager you come across that?"

Something flickered across Smith's face. "Not every teenager, no. Just the ones that make an impression."

"Good to know. Come on, then, Smith, who's going first?"

"You go ahead. I like to know who I'm dealing with."

"So do I." Sam sighed. "But fine. Anything in particular you want to hear?"

"What about your first? I'm curious about that."

"My first? That was a vengeful spirit. Ghost, really. I was ten, I think. We were in - California, I think? Or maybe Oregon? Somewhere on the West Coast. I was doing research - who died, where, how, when, you know. We figured out it was the old man who'd lived in the house for _years_ before he died. We found the grave, dug it, and burned the body. He showed up once or twice, but salt disrupts spirits and we had shotgun shells filled with it."

"You dug a grave? At ten years old?"

"Well, Dean and Dad helped. We took turns." Sam stabbed a piece of orange chicken with his fork.

Smith shuddered. "Oh, that's wrong."

"Had to start sometime. Your turn, Smith."

"There was a time I was trapped on Skaro. Nasty place, that, home of the Daleks."

"The what?"

"Daleks. Mutated creatures in a metal exoskeleton that do nothing but hate."

"Metal?"

"Metal. Run on static."

"Static," Sam repeated. "All right, so we've got mutated things running on carpet fuzz. What happened on - Scare-o?"

"Skaro," Smith corrected, and then he was off and running with the story.

They talked for hours, trading stories of hunts, and Sam reluctantly began to believe Smith was telling a partial truth, at the very least.

That became the pattern, then: school would pass as normal, and then Smith would come over at night. It worked that way until Friday, when Sam opened the door just as Smith raised his hand to knock.

"Oh," Smith said, staring at his clothes.

"Oh," Sam echoed stupidly. Somehow, it hadn't occurred to him Smith would see him on a working night.

"Well, that's...different. What's the occasion, eh? Going to a party? " Smith grinned, too bright.

"Don't play stupid." Sam stepped forward, forcing Smith to move back, and shut the door firmly behind him. "Rain check?"

"Sam."

"What?"

"I can't let you do this."

"You don't get a say."

"Why don't you get a different job?"

"Regular schedule means I can't hunt."

"And hunting's that important to you, is it?"

"Hunting's my life. You should know, you hunt. Can _you_ just walk away when there are people you can save?"

Smith just looked at him for a minute. "No," he said at last. "I can't. Which is why you're not going out tonight."

"What?"

"You're not going out," Smith repeated. "Not tonight, not ever again, you hear me? _Never. Again._ "

"You don’t get to make that call for me-"

Smith stepped right up against you. "Why do you do this, huh? You don't have bills. You don't have anything to buy."

"I have food and weapons and clothes," Sam growled. "I have medical bills and field trips and all sorts of other random shit. I need money."

"What, and this is the only way?"

"It's the only way I know. Why, you got a better way for a twelve-year-old to get money?"

Smith rocked back on his heels. _"Twelve?"_

 _Shit._ "Excuse me, I have to-"

The bag Smith was holding hit the ground as he grabbed Sam's arms. "No. We've talked a lot over the past week, but there's still things you haven't told me."

"And there are things _you_ haven't told _me_ , so if you don't mind _letting go-_ " He wrenched himself free from Smith's grip.

"One of those things is that-"

"Hey!" someone yelled from the street. "Everything okay?"

"Fine," Sam called back, leaning around Smith.

"You sure?"

Sam recognized the ratty orange hat on the man's head. "I'm sure, James. We're just talking."

James waved a hand and turned away.

"Nice neighbors?" Smith asked.

"Yeah. He helped me a lot, when I first - uh, moved in. Now, seriously, I have to go."

"No, you don't. Sam, please, just - not tonight."

"Why not? I need to live."

"Then let me help."

"Why?" Sam asked. "Why do you care?"

"Oh, because you're a lonely little boy trying to make his way in the world. Been there." Smith shrugged.

"Who says I'm lonely?" Sam demanded.

"Oh, come on. I see you all day every day. It's what made me interested in you in the first place, you know. Everyone else, it's talk, talk, talk. 'Can I borrow a pencil?' 'Mr. Galagger's tie is so weird today.' 'Ugh, the test was dreadful.' But not you! Not you. You don't talk to anyone. No words, no notes, just - silence. It's weird."

"So?"

"So? _So?_ It's _weird,_ is what it is. I have never seen anyone been so thoroughly ignored. And I have seen a lot."

"So?"

"Oh, is that all you can say? So?"

"Apparently. Now I need to-"

"Nope. You're not going anywhere. I want to help you."

"For how long, though?" Sam snapped. "How long will you be here, a month? Two? When are you leaving, Smith, because you're sure as hell not a teacher."

He rocked back on his heels. "I told you. I'm a traveler. I travel."

"Just like I'm a homeowner," Sam shot back. "I can't depend on you, Smith. Not for long, because you're going to _leave._ I can't get out of practice with how I make my living or I starve. Now get _out of my way._ "

"No."

"Don't make me fight you, Smith."

"Oh, what are you gonna do? Punch me?"

Sam's jaw twitched. "If I do?"

"You really would punch me, wouldn't you," Smith said.

"As you're so fond of saying when I tell you about hunts, I'm a violent person."

"Oh, well, can't fight nature, now, can you?"

"If we start that, we'll be here all night," Sam said. "Smith, I need money. I need to work. So unless you want me to die a slow and painful death, you need to let me go."

"Oh, you won't die from one night."

"Three days without water, Smith, that's what I'm looking at. It hasn't rained enough for me to have _anything,_ and I am out of money. That's what you don't seem to get, you know? You've been here _months_ , and I assume you've spent more time here than just this, but you just don't get it. This life? On Earth? It's _hard._ We don't all have a sonic screwdriver and a steady income. We don't all get to know where out next meal's coming from, or whether we'll survive the night. It's bad choices and no good options, and you do _not_ get to tell me how to live my life. Do you understand that, _Doctor?_ " He pushed past.

Smith didn't try to stop him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are hostages.

The weekend passed the way it always did. Sam worked, tidied up after himself, went shopping, finished his homework, and spent most of his time in the public library, which was not only warm and free but also had entertainment in the form of computers, books, and people-watching. On Saturday Sam found himself in the science section, searching for anything theoretical about time travel; Sunday found him walking to the next town over to salt and burn a corpse that had been causing problems at their hospital. His arm caught a sharp corner badly enough that it was still bleeding when he got back to the house hours later, and he sewed it up with dental floss and a needle he held over a lit match.

Monday, too, passed the way it always did at school. Sam spent most of the time wondering if Smith was going to show up that night with food and the promise of companionship, unsure if he wanted him to - he couldn't deny that he enjoyed talking to the man, but he also didn't want to have to defend himself the way he hadn't needed to since he was eleven.

Smith did appear that night. It wasn't until Friday he didn't show - probably, Sam thought, because he didn't want to have to see Sam looking like the cheap piece of filth he was. They talked about hunting and Smith's travels, including the weird metal men that had appeared and disappeared just as quickly not too long before. "Cybermen", Smith called them.

Smith also told him about the Daleks, describing all of their encounters in detail, and Sam was fascinated by them. "It's like science fiction," he said, laughing.

Smith grinned so wide his face almost split in two. "It is, isn't it? And your life is more like fantasy."

Three weeks after Smith had first come to his house, Sam had taken the AP exams and now most of his classes consisted of games while they counted down the fortnight until the end of school. His seventeenth birthday went by uncelebrated and unmarked. He still hunted when there was a case nearby, but they weren't nearly as common as they had been once. 

But, because Sam was clearly not allowed to have anything good in his life, that was when everything went wrong.

Smith was throwing things at them in some demented form of a quiz game when the power went out. "Well that's fun, isn't it?" Smith crowed. "Darkness. Always good." He kept going, but Sam saw how his gaze had sharpened on the door. He wasn't as calm as he seemed. The next time Smith looked at him, Sam tapped the arm with a knife strapped to it under his sleeve. Smith nodded at him and relaxed minutely.

Two minutes later, everything _really_ went to Hell when the door crashed open and something came in. "Oh no," Sam heard Smith say before his own attention narrowed to the thing.

It was short, maybe three feet tall, with a black bumper around the base of a paneled cylinder with orbs on it. Coming off the panels were a plunger and something that looked like a long halogen bulb. The top was a dome with two shorter halogens sticking up in a parody of ears and a camera on a pole.

_Dalek._

"Doctor," it blared. Sam winced - Smith had described their voices, but Sam hadn't really thought about it since. "The great enemy."

"Yes, well, of course I am," Smith said cheerfully, but Sam could see the tension in the way he held himself. 

What did they run on? Static? Static was electricity, which meant electromagnetic field, which was probably how they moved.

"You will come."

"And why would I do that?"

"We will kill all of them."

"You'll do that anyway. Let's talk." Smith hopped onto the counter and crossed his legs.

If he could disrupt the field, maybe he could disrupt the thing's ability to move, or maybe he could overload the circuits in the thing's skeleton. It was worth a shot, anyway. He reached into his bag and found the Taser he kept amped for a Rawhead.

"You will come with us," the thing said, swiveling. "Or we will kill them all."

"Will you, now?"

The thing fired, the laser passing so close by Sam he felt it singe his arm hair. It hit the girl at the table next to him; she flashed green, skeleton the only solid thing in her, and fell face-down onto the table.

"What'd you do that for?" Smith screamed at the Dalek, all fake calm gone. "She is a _child!_ "

The head swiveled back to Smith. "She was a child. Now she is dead. Come."

Sam pulled the Taser and took careful aim before he fired at the vents in the neck. He hit right where he was aiming for and current raced over the metal. Pops and the smell of cooking meat filled the room; the plunger, camera, and laser slumped toward the floor.

"Sam?" Smith asked after a few moments.

"I'm sorry." Sam stood and started pulling the barbs back toward him. "I should've been faster."

"Sam," Smith said again. "What did you use?"

"Taser. Hundred thousand volts."

"What made you think _that_ would work?"

"You said they ran on static. Figured I could overload the circuits or screw with their functioning. Why hasn't anyone tried electricity before?"

"I suppose we thought the Daleks would have defenses against it. It's what they run on." Smith waved a hand in front of his face to dissipate the smoke. "I think you killed it." He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and knelt.

"Jenny?" someone asked, voice quavering.

Sam reached to put his fingers on her neck, knowing what he would find. "I'm sorry," he said after a few seconds. "I wasn't fast enough."

"Don't start that, Sam," Smith warned. "You did the best you could. Better than I did. You said it was a Taser? How many shots do you have?"

"Just the one."

There was a click and a panel opened. "Here we go," Smith breathed.

The stench of meat got stronger, and more smoke appeared. Smith coughed and waved his hand some more. "You fried it. You killed a Dalek with a Taser. That's impressive, Sam, you're brilliant."

"Thanks, I guess. Was that the only one? It said 'we'."

"No. No, it wasn't. These things move in groups. This was the advance guard. There are probably more in the other classrooms."

"Killing?"

"No. No, not yet. They're tacticians. Taser?"

"What?"

"Give me your Taser." Smith held out a hand expectantly.

Sam started toward the front of the room. "What do you mean, tacticians?"

"I mean, right now, every single man, woman, and child in this school is a hostage they can use against me." Smith took the Taser Sam held out to him and aimed the lighted end of the pen at it. "Constant charge," he explained. "This will never run out. Now. We need to stop the Daleks and save the students and faculty."

"How?"

"I'm not sure." Smith rocked back on his heels and then stood. "Sam. Need your help. You're clever. Figure a way out of this while I figure out evacuation."

"How many Daleks?"

"I don't know."

"Do you know where they are?"

"Nope. Fun, isn't it, working on the fly?"

"I've had enough working on the fly for one lifetime, thanks," Sam said acidly. "Remember how we got to talking?"

"Oh, right, the hemovariform."

"Dude, just call it a wolf, it's way easier. What are their weak spots?"

"What? Oh, yes, of course! The eyestalk. Now that one of them's been fried, they'll have their shields up. It's weakest at the eyestalk. Aim for the eyestalk."

"Will anything work or just a Taser?"

"Oh, don't tell me you've got a gun, I hate guns."

"You hate them." Sam grinned and put an arm under his shirt, pulling his Glock 19. "I love them. Will it work?"

"Yes, but it'll take more firepower than you've got."

"Oh, I doubt that. Hollow-point explosive. Tiny, but it packs a punch for when I need it to."

"Still just nine bullets."

"Fifteen," Sam corrected, "plus one in the chamber. And I have more clips in my bag. Unless there's a hundred of them, I'm good. And there's the Taser, if there _are_ more than a hundred of them."

"You have a _gun?_ "

"Yes, Heather, I _always_ have a gun, I _always_ have a Taser, and I _always_ have a few knives. And it's coming in handy now, isn't it? So just - head down, against the wall, all of you. Smaller targets." He looked at Smith. "Got any metal on you?"

"What? Sam, I'm planning an evacuation-"

"And if we make the hallways into conductors, we can fry a lot of them at once, which will help with the evacuation."

"Of course. Low-resistance metals. Good."

"And - if we have pipes, I can put them across the lockers. Head height for them. We can crawl under, but they won't be able to!"

"Sam!" Smith grabbed his arms. "You. Are. Brilliant. There's a prep room - pipes on the wall - let's get this done." He dragged Sam behind him into the prep room and shut the door. "Why aren't they panicking?"

"What?"

"Your classmates. They're teenagers. Overexcitable, angry, hormonal volcanoes. They just saw a metal alien get fried, Jenny be killed, and you armed to the teeth and ready to kill. Why. Aren't. They. Panicking."

Sam's blood ran cold. "You think they knew?"

"I think something very strange is going on in this town. That's what brought me here in the first place." He turned the lighted end of the screwdriver to the brackets holding the exposed pipes to the wall. "Not just the lack of usual terrestrial activity, but that's explained by you. You take care of it. But them...something else. Something weird. I like weird. Just not this weird. This weird is the kind of weird that makes me go _ugh._ And. Daleks. Usually we'd see more of them by now. Why just the one, why...not...oh."

"Oh?"

"Oh. There was just the one Dalek, but there are dozens of kids in the school. Not one scream. Not one person panicking. Heather's the only one talking. But somehow, you're not affected, you're still _reacting._ Why? What makes you different?"

"Couldn't they just be in shock?"

"Oh, you don't really believe that, do you? Twenty people, not one of them screams when a classmate gets killed by an alien. You've been hunting too long to believe that. And you know what that means?"

"What?"

"That wasn't a real Dalek."

"So what was it?"

"Don't know. We'll have to figure it out. Maybe there's a perception filter, or maybe a drug? But why aren't you affected?"

"Don't know. We should figure out what's causing it, first."

"Of course we do. But where do we start? Scan the kids. Of course, scan the kids."

"Scan? What do you mean, _scan?_ "

The doctor twiddled something on his screwdriver and pointed it at Sam. "This. Oh, look at that, high levels of sulfur and something missing. Something missing, huh! Never seen that before. And the sulfur levels should be killing you. But you're okay. Maybe that's it, the sulfur, which means it's a drug. But how, what's the delivery mechanism?" He yanked open the door. "Ken? Get in here."

"Yes, sir," Sam heard. A moment later, the smallest kid in the classroom came in. "Yes, sir?"

"Sam, hold him still."

"Why?" Sam asked, moving behind Ken and grabbing his arms anyway.

"This might hurt him a bit." The Doctor pointed the screwdriver. "Not fatal!" he yelled over the screams. "Just a bit - painful, there we go, about time he stopped screaming."

"It's because he's unconscious," Sam snapped, lowering Ken to the floor. "What did you _do_ to him?"

"Just a scan. It shouldn't have hurt him that badly. There's something wrong with his mind, but it's not in his body. It's environmental. Why?"

"All we have to do is find them and ask."

"Good point! Why, though, what makes you think they'd talk to me?"

Sam's mind raced. "Because they're drugging people, which means they don't want trouble. They're cowards. Show them a fight - maybe the destroyed fake-Dalek - and they might go away, or expose a weakness so we can kill them."

"No! No killing, Sam, you got that? That's not the way I do things."

"Why not?" Sam spat. "They killed Jenny."

"You, with your monsters - or things you decide are monsters, anyway-"

"I let the _body count_ decide who the monsters are," Sam snapped. "And the people who could do something about it - what does that make them, Smith, the people who let them keep killing? The people who could stop it and they just let it happen? _What does that make them?_ "

"What about the ones who aren't going to kill again? Doesn't everyone deserve mercy?"

"You want a bunch of murderous aliens to be shown _mercy?_ "

"Yes! And anyway, all this philosophy should probably wait until we've dealt with the aliens you just mentioned."

"My head," Ken groaned suddenly.

"It's all right, Ken," Smith said quickly, kneeling down. "Just a bit of a migraine. Stay in here where it's dark, you'll be okay."

"Where will they be?" Sam asked. "Office, auditorium-"

"They'll have gathered everyone into somewhere big, somewhere they can watch them all with minimal effort. Big, empty, confined space."

"Gym."

"Right. Let's get there, shall we?"

"Sam? Dr. Smith? What's going on?"

"Nothing to worry about," Smith said. "We'll be back."

"It's always something to worry about with _him_ here," Ken said venomously, glaring at Sam.

"Oh, usually it's me getting that reaction," Smith said. "What've you done, eh? Snogged his girlfriend?"

"We have to get to the gym," Sam said, rather than answer. "They'll know we're not there by now, right?"

"Possibly. Probably, actually, almost definitely. Why did I not think of that?"

"Don't know. Maybe you're losing your touch."

"No, no, that's not it. Whatever it is, it's affecting me, too, that's the only explanation. Me not you. Why?"

"You're the danger."

"No. It's affecting everyone else. Something else. Oh, of course!"

"What?"

" _You're_ the danger. These hostages aren't for me, they're for you. So who did you irritate enough that they want you to suffer like this?"

"Take your pick," Sam retorted. "I'm a hunter. Pissing things off is kind of what I _do_."

"This one would be powerful. You'd remember him. Come on, Sam, _think._ Anything that swore vengeance? Anything that wants you dead?"

"Try everything."

"Come on, think. _Think._ You're clever, Sam, and they're clever enough to try to make a Dalek to scare me. What has the ability to do that, _and_ affect everyone, _and_ take over the school?"

Sam thought furiously and remembered. "Six months ago. It was a coven. Humans who'd sold their souls to demons for power. Six of them, they told me they'd be avenged, but I didn't believe them."

"Who would avenge them?"

"Other witches, I guess, I don't - they work through hex bags, if we can find and burn that we can break the spell."

Smith visibly swallowed something he was about to say and instead asked, "What does a hex bag look like?"

"Burlap or leather, tied with twine, herbs and blood inside. Symbols on the outside. Probably hidden in a cabinet somewhere in the outer room. Not here, which is why Ken is suddenly normal after he passed out. Doing okay, Ken?"

"Fuck you, Winchester."

"Oh, hey now," Smith said. "That's not very nice."

"Can't really blame him," Sam said crisply. "Now I have a hex bag to find. Ken, don't go giving away all my secrets."

He tore through the cabinets in the outer room, dragging microscopes out to the counter, putting chemicals on the floor. His classmates ignored him in silence.

Why hadn't he noticed it earlier? The strange calm? Jenny's best friend had been scared, but quiet, and she'd barely reacted considering the circumstances. Now he was paying attention, he could see that they were all too calm, too quiet, staring ahead with eerily blank expressions as they sat in their seats. They'd ignored his directions to get along the wall with their heads down, which may have made his search easier but also made them bigger targets.

The hex bag was hidden behind a bottle of acetic acid. Sam grabbed it and hurried back to the prep room. "Got it," he announced. "Now, let's see what's inside."

He pulled the ends of the string holding the bag closed and it fell open in his hand. It took him a moment to recognize everything in the bag, but when he did, he swore. "Oh, great. Lavender for the nervous system, lemon balm to sedate, griffonia for happiness, chamomile to tie it together. And the horn to bind and strengthen it all. If I burn it, it'll kill them."

"So what now?" Ken asked. His knees were drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them; Smith stood over him, arms crossed.

"Now," Sam said, "we find the witches and kill them."

"Oh, great, more killing," Smith said. "Do you ever consider another way of dealing with problems?"

Sam blew out a breath, frustrated. "These bags are tied directly to their power. We need to cut off the power source if we're going to keep the students alive. It's five hundred teenagers or however many witches there are out there, Smith. I know who I care about."

"Can you really only care about one of them, Sam? Care about one group over another?" Smith stepped up close. "Cause see, I don't think you can turn it off like that, turn off how much you care."

"I care a lot more about five hundred innocents than maybe a dozen witches," Sam growled.

"But you still care about the witches," Smith said smugly.

Sam shoved him back. "Of course I care," he snapped. "Every time I kill, every time - why do you think I watched the wolf turn back? I can't stop caring, but for now, I have to act like I don't or this hex bag will make everyone so calm their hearts will _stop._ That's what the blood does, it turns this from an anti-anxiety to a killer. Can't burn it, can't get rid of it, can't even hide it, so that leaves us with kill them. And no, before you ask, knocking them out will not work."

"How do you know?" Ken asked. "How do you know all this?"

"It's what I do." Sam stepped back through the door connecting the prep room and classroom. "I need to go deal with this before everyone dies."

Smith followed him out. The school was empty as they ran through it. "What makes you think you can help?" Sam snapped at Smith.

"They knew about Daleks, which mans they're not normal witches. They're probably Hervoken or Fendahleen."

"Weaknesses?"

"Salt and iron."

"Oh, great. I have those." Sam reached into the pocket of his bag and pulled out the clip in the pocket third from the right. He double-checked to make sure a cross and 'Fe' were written on the side and said, "Consecrated iron. I have an iron dagger, too, in case these run out." He switched the clips with practiced efficiency.

"Don't kill them, we can reason with them-"

"If they want revenge on me, Smith, they're not going to listen to reason," Sam hissed. "Even if they do, what's keeping them from coming back later and starting all over again?"

"Me."

"You? What makes you think they'll be scared of you?"

"Because - oh, here we are, then. Gym. What's the plan?"

"The plan is to go in, see what the hell is going on, and deal with the damn witches."

"Don't kill them."

"It may be the only way out of this, Smith." Sam flicked off the safety, chambered a round, and caught the one that was ejected. "No windows on the doors, so I'll go in. You just - stay out here. Your moralizing's going to get people killed." He darted through the door before Smith could say anything in return and sucked in a breath when he saw the bleachers filled with blank-faced peers.

There were four inhumanly beautiful women in the middle of the room, facing him. "Hello," the one with brown hair said. "Sam Winchester, I assume."

"You assume right," Sam said. "And I know there's more of you, so you might as well _come out!_ "

"Clever boy," the blonde said. "But there only need be the four of us to take care of an upstart like you."

Sam swallowed, mentally calculating the chances that everyone would get out alive. They weren't good. "What do you want?"

"What we want is to see you suffer for what you did to our sisters," the redhead snapped.

"And the Dalek? How's that fit in?"

"Oh, they almost took over Britain. Figured they'd be a good distraction. Where is it, by the way?"

"Dead," Sam said. "I killed it."

"Well, in that case," the redhead said, "let's see how you do against the rest of them."

She snapped her fingers. A laser grazed his arm, singeing the hair and burning his skin less than an inch from his earlier wound; he grabbed his Taser and shot the thing that had fired it. But there was another, and another - four, five, six more of them, aiming right at him, and as he dodged and pulled in the barbs he tried to think of a way to finish them quickly. They were animated by magic, so if he could get to the witches - but how were they animating them? Were they still working through hex bags or were they just that old?

Sam dodged another shot; it hit the fake-Dalek across from him, which burst into flames.

A plan coalesced in his mind. He ran toward one of them, twisting away from the laser it sent - they seemed to need a few seconds to recharge - and got behind it, too close for it to fire at him. It tried to mow him down instead, but the second Sam saw a laser heading for him he jumped and rolled to his feet. The thing he'd been hiding behind exploded.

 _Three down, four to go,_ he thought with grim joy, twisting away from a beam too close for comfort.

He ran between two of them, timing it so that they shot each other trying to get to him, and pulled his Taser out again. Ducking behind one of the last two, Sam waited until he saw the other one fire before he stood and pulled the trigger to shoot it. Electricity crackled, racing over the thing's exoskeleton and shorting everything out. He stood, covered in soot and burn marks, surrounded by flaming metal, and shouted, "Is that the best you can do?"

The witches cackled. "Oh, my dear boy, you haven't seen a tenth of what we can do!" one crowed. They threw their heads back and laughed more.

"Why are you always so dramatic?" Sam complained, pulling the gun from his waistband and aiming it at the one with black hair who had yet to speak. The _bang_ drew the witches from their mirth, and the one he'd been aiming at hit the ground.

"Matilda!" the redhead howled. Sam shot her next, right through the heart, and then the air shimmered around the two remaining women.

Screams went up around them. Sam swore - he should have thought of that. Without all four of the makers, the hex bags were failing. It was good in that it meant none of the students would die from them, but it also meant now he had hundreds of panicking teenagers to contend with as well as the two witches who had shielded themselves and were probably cooking up something nasty.

"Hello!" Sam heard Smith call from behind him. "I'm the Doctor. And you are?"

The witches ignored him.

"Right, well, if anyone wants to tell me what's going on. Sam?"

"Seven more of the fake Daleks dead, two of the witches."

"Oh, you killed them? I thought you were better than that."

"If you've got a plan, Smith, I'd be more than happy to hear it."

"Well, it looks like the hex bags aren't working anymore, so-"

"They're still working, they're just not as strong," Sam said. "Maybe - _maybe_ \- we could burn them without killing everyone, but I doubt it. They're too old for that."

"What are they up to, eh?"

"I don't know." Sam sniffed hard, trying to smell, and caught the stench of bitter apple. _"Shit,"_ he whispered vehemently before raising his voice. "Smith, get them out, get them all out-"

"What are they doing?"

"It's a death spell. Smith, I can get through their shields, but you need to get them out or every single person in here is going to die."

Smith bit his lip, obviously torn. "You can't kill them. Maybe I can talk to them-"

"Your pacifism is going to kill us all," Sam snapped. "You were talking evacuation back in the classroom. Get them out before the calm's gone completely. Right now, Smith, it is two witches hell-bent on killing everyone, or five hundred innocent teenagers, over a hundred faculty, and us. You are not the one who has to live with however this turns out, _I_ am. Now _get them out of here._ "

Sam turned before Smith could say anything, pulling out two knives as he went - one of pure silver, one of iron. He stabbed the shield the witches had up, both knives at once, and his knees buckled as their power roared through them. He gritted his teeth against the fire racing through his veins, braids of white pain flowing in and around every cell in his body. _No,_ he begged, _no._ He drew his arms back and stabbed again, braced for the pain, focused only on one thing: _I have to save them_.

He struck, again and again, hoping and praying that Smith was getting everyone out as he dragged himself through the shield. He was beginning to think he wasn't going to get through in time. His arms hurt worse with every blow and he thrust the thought from his mind, whipping himself into a frenzy of anger, hoping the rage would make it easier to do what had to be done.

At last, at long last, the magic around him dissolved and he stumbled through. He heard the two of them strike a match - not good, that was the final stage of the spell - and Sam reached with the iron knife through the flashes in his vision where the shield had blinded him.

The woman Sam had hit let loose a petering scream and he slashed with the other hand where he thought the other one was. The knife buried itself somewhere fleshy and was ripped from him. Sam blinked quickly to try to clear his vision and managed just in time to see a fist flying at his face. He landed on his back, the breath knocked out of him.

A kick to his midsection was next, and his eyes dotted further with pain. "I can't work the spell myself, boy," the remaining witch growled. "But that's okay. The plan was to make you watch as we killed everyone you knew before we killed you ourselves. An eye for an eye, you filthy murderer."

"Makes the whole world blind," Sam spat, then grunted at the next kick. He wrapped his hand around a knife in his sleeve. The next time the foot came in for a kick, he slashed the Achilles tendon and rolled away. He found he couldn't stand when he tried and bent back over, curled around his right side with an arm instinctively going to cover it. He and the witch circled each other, her unable to put weight on an ankle, him unable to stand straight.

"They're out," Smith yelled. The witch's eyes flicked over his shoulder, and that was the opening he was looking for. He lunged forward ungracefully and managed to get the knife into her throat. She fell, choked, and Sam fell beside her. The blood pouring from her throat was aerating, bubbles forming and popping, turning the ground beneath her head into a foamy mess of red, a sharp contrast against her blonde hair.

Sam struggled to his knees to watch as she took her last breath, and then he closed her eyes and sat back on his heels with a sigh.

Smith knelt down next to him. "Sam?"

"I hate this," Sam whispered. "Every time it's like a bit of me dies with them."

"So why do you kill them?"

"Because they would have killed everyone else." Sam sighed again. "I just have to remember that. Us or them, Smith. I'll always choose us. Now I need to check the chemistry classroom. They probably just woke up, for lack of a better term."

"Yeah, okay," Smith said. "The bodies?"

"Someone's already called 911, I'm sure," Sam said. "We're going to have to leave them. If they come back as ghosts, well - that's a problem for another day. Another hunter, really, if I ever show my face in this town after today I'll be arrested."

"I can call a friend," Smith said. "He'll take care of clean-up."

"Awesome." Sam lurched to his feet, arm still wrapped around his ribs. "I'm going to the classroom. You just make your call."

Smith stood with him. "I'm coming with you. If someone else is here, you're not going to be able to deal with them."

Sam wanted to argue, but the first step he took sent such agony rolling through him he had to swallow back bile. He didn't speak, instead focusing on putting on foot in front of the other. 

Smith took out his phone and pressed two buttons - whoever the guy was, he was on speed-dial. "Hello, Jack? Got something for you...No, it wasn’t me this time….Five casualties and a lot of debris….Actual witches….No, there was a hunter here….Sixteen, they were after him….High school….Think you could bring some nanogenes along?...Great, thanks….Yeah, see you in a bit."

"So where's your friend coming from?" Sam asked.

"New York."

"New York. It'll take him a while."

"No, it won't."

"How will he know where you are?"

"He'll find us. How badly are you hurt?"

"Not too bad." Sam felt along his side gingerly and winced. "A few broken ribs, maybe. Hurts like hell, but I've had worse. You?"

"Oh, I'm fine. I'm always fine." Smith caught him as he started to tip over. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'll be okay," Sam said, regaining his balance and continuing on. Smith kept hold of his arm.

Around the next corner, a column of light suddenly appeared. Sam reached instinctively for a knife, hand barely reaching the hilt before it resolved into two people - a square-jawed white man and a petite black woman.

"Doctor," the woman said warmly.

"Martha," he said happily, striding forward. "Jack! How've you been?"

Without Smith to hold him steady, Sam tilted into the lockers. He groped for his knife even as he slid to the floor. "Smith, get back-" he croaked.

"Sam, these are who I called," Smith said. "Jack, did you bring the nanogenes?"

"What happened to him?" the woman asked with a British accent, pushing forward. Smith came beside her, Jack beside him. The two strangers knelt down to see Sam properly.

"Witches," Smith said, sounding delighted. "Actual _witches!_ "

"Sure they weren't just Carrionites?" Martha asked.

"Positive. Sam, knives down. These are my friends."

"I'm a doctor," the woman said reassuringly. "We have something that'll fix you right up."

The man held out a glowing hand. "Where are you hurt?"

Sam shifted back, trying to put distance between them and get to his feet.

"Sam," Smith said, exasperated. "Just let them work. He said his ribs were broken."

"And you didn't scan him?" the woman demanded.

"Oh, fine." Smith pointed the lit end of his screwdriver at him. "Sam, these are Captain Jack Harkness and Doctor Martha Jones. Now will you please let them work so we can check on that classroom?"

Sam stilled reluctantly. "Why are you glowing?" he asked Harkness.

"It's the nanogenes," he explained. "They'll fix you up in a matter of seconds. As soon as the Doctor finishes scanning you."

Smith held the screwdriver vertical. "Malnutrition, four broken ribs on the right side, and a lot of old injuries."

"Here we go, then," Harkness said, pressing his hand to Sam's side. The glow almost immediately sank beneath Sam's shirt.

Sam did his best not to moan in relief when he felt his ribs pop back into place, then lurched forward with a gasp when fire spread through his veins. He shook uncontrollably and bit his lip until it bled, fighting not to scream or cry.

"Sam? Sam?" he heard someone ask.

"Call them back," Jones said urgently. "Jack, damn it, get them _away_ from him-"

The fire receded; his formerly-bruised ribs were the last to stop hurting. "The fuck?" he breathed, lying on his uninjured side.

"I don't know," Harkness said. "That shouldn't have happened."

"It's probably the sulfur," Smith said. "You have too much - maybe the nanogenes tried to clean it up, but since you're so used to it, that would have upset equilibrium."

"Maybe," Sam said weakly. "The hell are they supposed to do?"

"They repair injuries," Jones said. "Can you stand?"

He levered himself up onto his knees, took a deep breath, and got to his feet. "Yes."

"Good." Jones and Harkness both got to theirs. 

Smith studied Sam's face. Sam matched his glare until Jones said, "What's this about a classroom?"

He and Smith filled them in on what happened as they walked back to the room. The door was locked - Smith pointed the screwdriver at it until it opened, and when they went in, it was to complete silence. Every student was staring at Heather's corpse; as one, they turned to look accusingly at the four who entered.

"I'm sorry," Sam said, voice cracking. "I'm so sorry. I should have been faster with the Taser."

"Yeah. You shoulda been," Nathan spat at him, angry face as red as his hair.

Sam started to move towards her body, but drew up short when they closed ranks around her. "Just get out, Winchester," Jenny said, tears coursing down her cheeks.

"Haven't you done enough?" Jim added, glaring at him like Sam was at fault for all the evil in the world.

"Oh, hey now," Harkness said. "Don't blame Sam for this."

"Why not?" Polly said venomously. "Heather's dead, and he doesn't have a scratch on him."

"But-"

"I'm going," Sam said, interrupting the fight before their anger at him was redirected to the adults. "Just let me get my backpack." He added softly to them, "Don't argue about it. They're right. I'll explain later. Smith, you know where to find me, I guess."

He grabbed his backpack, ducked the eraser thrown at his head, and started the long, lonely walk home.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it wasn't clear, the Daleks were a conjuration designed to scare Sam. They didn't know who the Doctor was, just that these metal things had invaded Britain before and that Sam probably knew that.

Harkness caught up with him in less than five minutes. "So. Sam. Winchester, I'm guessing, is your last name."

"Yeah."

"How'd you get caught up in all this? How'd the Doctor drag you in?"

"I think it was the other way around, this time," Sam said. "They were after me."

"Why would they be after a teenager?"

"Because I killed six of them half a year ago."

Harkness stumbled. "You - you killed-"

"I killed six witches six months ago because they'd killed fourteen people in a week."

"How'd you do that?"

"Guns, mostly." Sam kicked a rock. "These witches - there were four, today - decided the best way to get revenge was to hold my school hostage. Guess it's time to move on."

"Yeah? Where you going?"

"Somewhere out of state." Sam shrugged. "Who knows? Find a highway, put out my thumb, see where I land."

"What does your family have to say about that?"

"Family's dead. It's just me. What about you, how'd you get close enough to Smith he calls you for clean-up?"

"I tried to sell him an ambulance back in World War II and things just kinda grew from there. How old are you?"

"Seventeen. Why?"

"Damn. One more year 'til I can flirt with you."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Age is a number. World War II? You're not old enough for that."

Harkness tapped his wrist, where there was a brown band. "Vortex manipulator. Time travel. I used to be a Time Agent."

"Which means?"

"We'd go around making sure nobody was trying to make things turn out weird or end the universe. Happens more than you'd think."

Sam made a face. "I'd believe it. What about Jones?"

"Her hospital got transported to the moon. She impressed the Doctor and he invited her to go traveling with him. She spent - oh, man, at least a year with him. He got her back the morning after she left with him. I've traveled with him too, now and then. Why do you call him Smith?"

"Better than calling him 'the Doctor', don't you think?" Harkness didn't answer, so Sam elaborated. "He came in, said his name was John Smith and he'd be our teacher. I didn't know he knew about anything until he got himself chased up a tree by a damn werewolf last month."

"Werewolf, huh? What's that like? As exciting as it sounds?" Harkness smirked. 

Sam looked down at the sidewalk, kicking another rock. "Nowhere near. When they die, they - they turn human again." Sam swallowed. "His name was Ronnie. He was fourteen. Smith and I took the body back to my house and burned it out back so the lycanthropy wouldn't spread."

"Oh." Harkness gave it a minute of silence before saying, "Where are we going, anyway?"

"The house. It's not far - end of the street." Sam pointed.

"The one that looks like it's been abandoned for sixty years?"

"That's the one."

"One of the ones that's better than it looks, huh?"

Sam chuckled. "Not quite."

"Fixer-upper?"

"To put it politely. Hello, James." Sam smiled at his neighbor.

"Sam. Who’s your friend?"

"Captain Jack Harkness," he said with an overblown bow.

James eyed him suspiciously but kept walking.

"That's James," Sam said. "Neighbor of mine."

"Why's he home in the middle of the day?"

"He's on disability. Fought in Vietnam. His wife Lorna's an EMT, which makes up the difference. He spends most of his time 'patrolling'."

"Veteran, huh?" Harkness smiled. "I can respect that."

"Good." Sam led the way up the steps and forced the front door open.

"Hinges need some oil," Harkness commented.

"Too expensive. Cheaper to just replace the hinges." He held the door for Harkness and then let it slam shut. "So, Dr. Jones. Known her long?"

"Long enough. She ran with the Unified Intelligence Taskforce for a while before she went freelance." Harkness scanned the foyer. "This was a grand old house once, wasn't it?"

"Probably." Sam led him to the front room. "Sorry, don’t have any chairs. Give me twenty minutes to pack."

Sam left him in the room - not like he cared about the blankets anymore - and started poking around, looking for the things that had scattered over the long four years. He gathered everything together, making periodic trips to drop it all off in the front room. "Don’t touch," he warned Harkness the first time he returned, bearing a handgun, a belt of knives, and a small crate of grenades. He was thorough, checking in every corner, making sure he didn't miss any weapons, avoiding going into the second bedroom on the right until he absolutely had to.

"Lot of weaponry," Harkness said.

"Yep," Sam said, and knelt down with a duffel bag. "Lot of this was Dad's. Some of it was my older brother's."

"Is that all of it?"

Sam shook his head. "Still have to go through some of the other rooms."

"Want me to-"

"No," Sam said quickly. "No. Thanks, but no."

Harkness held up his hands. "Okay. I'll leave you to it."

When the bag had been packed full and zipped, Sam couldn't leave it any longer. He stood and went to the hallway, resting a hand on the warped wood of what had been his father's room. He took a deep breath and went in for the first time in four years.

It was dusty, just like the rest of the house. The black duffel his father had carried with him for years was sitting in the middle of the floor, on top of the sleeping bag now riddled with mold. His brother's dark green bag was against the wall. Newspaper clippings of long-ago hunts hung faded and yellow from the walls; a laminated map of the United States had been marked to show where his father had thought the thing that had killed his wife had struck. Four years out of date, it was useless now. Just another reminder of how he'd failed his family.

Sam took down everything on the walls slowly, methodically. It didn't take long before all that was left to show his father had ever existed was a half-filled duffel bag in the center of the room.

Sam grabbed both his father's and Dean's and dragged them out to the living room. All told, his possessions filled three duffels and a backpack.

"Done," Sam said flatly.

"Is this it?" Harkness asked.

"Everything I own, ready for transport," Sam told him with a bitter smile.

"Where you headed?"

"Don't know. Another town in another state with another abandoned house I can squat in. Maybe I'll head south. Somewhere warm, for a change."

"How long have you been here?"

"Four years."

"What, your dad dropped you off and split?"

Sam gritted his teeth against Harkness's contempt. "There was a hunt. Four hours from here. They had to go."

"And they left you behind."

"I wanted to stay," Sam snapped. "I - I hated hunting back then. I wanted out. I asked to take a test, and when I got back from school, they were gone."

"And they just never came back?"

"After a month or two, I stopped expecting them to." Sam heaved two of the duffel bags over his back. "Weren't you supposed to be doing clean-up at the school?"

"Martha and the Doctor have it covered," Harkness said dismissively. 

Sam picked up the third duffel. "I should get going. There'll be a lynch mob after me now."

"What, they'll blame you?" Harkness laughed.

"You saw the way they reacted to me in that classroom. I'd rather be gone by the time they come looking."

"I'll come with you, then," Harkness said, shaking out his long coat as he stood from where he leaned against the wall. "Where would you like to go?"

Sam smiled.  
***  
"Playground, eh?" Smith said, coming to sit on top of the picnic table beside where Sam was sitting on the bench, Harkness on his right.

Sam smiled. "It's peaceful. And I'm not old enough yet to be chased off."

Someone laughed and Sam leaned back to see who was on the other side of Smith. "Doctor Jones," he said.

"Sam," she answered, smiling. 

"School worked out?"

"Completely."

"Thank you."

"Oh, don’t thank her, it's her job," Smith said.

"Not anymore," she protested. "I quit, remember? I'm freelance now."

"There's always Torchwood," Jack offered.

"Oh, you know I can't do that," Jones said. "Now. Shall we go home?"

"Let's," Jack said, hopping off the table and offering his arm. "Sam. Nice meeting you."

"You too."

Smith bumped Sam's shoulder with a knee when Harkness and Jones were out of earshot. "Off to find somewhere to teleport away with their vortex manipulators. And you and I need to talk."

"About?"

Smith stood instead of answering. "I know where you've been staying. I think it's about time you see where I live."

Sam stood as well and slung the bags over his shoulders with a grunt. "Might as well."

"It's right over there." Smith pointed at a blue box on the other side of the playground and they started walking. "So what's next for you?"

"Find another house in another state. What about you?"

"Oh, I'll go traveling again, I'm sure. All of time and space." A blue ball rolled to a stop in front of them; Smith picked it up and tossed it back to the group of children it had gotten away from. They shrieked in the glee only children can feel and went back to playing; one of the women nearby smiled wanly at them. "I've been told before I shouldn't travel alone, though."

"Got a friend you can pick up?"

"Not as such, no."

"Oh, come on. All of time and space and not a single friend willing to travel?"

"Well, there might be one."

"Yeah?"

Smith groped in his pocket for a second and found a brass key. "He's really quite an interesting character. Violent and vulnerable and ruthless."

"He the kind of guy you really want to travel with?"

Smith flashed a smile at him. "Maybe. It's his choice. But let's continue the conversation inside."

Words from weeks before flashed through Sam's mind: _It's bigger on the inside._ "You don't mean - this is your-"

"My ship, yes. She's called the TARDIS, Time And Relative Dimensions In Space."

"Relative? What, like Einstein relative? Hot stove and a pretty girl?" 

"Hot stove and a pretty girl," Smith said, turning the key and pushing open the door. "After you."

Sam walked two feet inside and stopped dead. He'd thought about what spaceships would look like time and time again, but he'd never imagined this. _Bigger on the inside._

He swung to stare at Smith. "Holy shit."

He burst out laughing. "Oh, reactions never get old." Smith stepped inside, forcing Sam in further, and closed the door, still chuckling. "Well, go on, then! Look around!"

Sam moved closer to the glass tube that dominated the room, larger than he would have expected for a three-by-three wooden box. There was a ramp leading up; beneath the walkway was a lot of complicated-looking machinery and a sling, probably for maintenance. Surrounding the glass tube was yet more machinery; there were chairs and a safety railing around the raised walkway. A staircase led up to a door on the left side. The walls, some sort of metallic gold, were punctuated by silver circles.

"Holy shit," he breathed again.

"This is just the beginning," Smith said with a wicked grin. "There's a library, a swimming pool, bedrooms, a closet the size of the house you were squatting in…the TARDIS is everything anyone could possibly need. So. What do you say?"

It took Sam a minute to catch up to what Smith was offering. "Wh-what? You want me to - to-"

"To travel with me, yes. Anywhere in time and space. Just say the word. Victorian England? Revolutionary France? Tsar Nicholas! He knew how to throw a party."

Never had Sam felt more like he was being choked. "I - I can't."

"Why not?"

"I can't just leave people to be killed." He shifted the duffels uncomfortably; he was strong, but they were heavy.

Smith's eyes tracked the movement. "Are you the only hunter on this continent?"

"Well, no, but-"

"So why not?"

Sam was getting frustrated. "I just can't, okay?"

"Why not?"

"Because I'm wrong!" Sam yelled at him.

_Shit._

He watched as the Doctor's face went from shock to confusion to - was that pity?

"Why do you think that?" he asked.

Sam just shook his head and looked away, biting his lip and looking up at the ceiling.

" _Sam._ " He strode forward and reached out to grab the boy's arms. "Talk to me. _Why do you think you're wrong?_ "

"I already told you," Sam said, and hated himself a little for the way his voice broke. "I kill things, Doctor, that's what I do. It's who I am."

"Why?" he pushed. " _Why_ do you kill things, Sam? Why can't they be left to other hunters to kill?"

"Because I owe them," Sam whispered, refusing to look at Smith and let him see the tears threatening.

The Doctor let out a short bark of laughter. "Oh. Sure. You were squatting in a derelict house with no running water or electricity. Your bed was a heap of coats, and now you're talking about hitchhiking somewhere so your classmates don't kill you. You're starving, literally, _starving!_ And they don't help you because they say they're overworked."

"Don't-"

"No, Sam. Tell me. Why do you owe them? Why are you wrong?"

Sam wrenched away and looked at the wall. "I'm a killer, Doctor. I'm not just talking about the monsters. Death just...follows me."

"Oh, I don't believe-"

"No?" Sam whirled back on him, duffels smacking his body and nearly making him fall. "My first year here, seventh grade, I took Linda Hurley to the dance. She died that weekend. Eighth grade, same thing with Nia Hilo - she was hanged. Ninth grade, I made a friend named Harold Numing. The day after I went to his house for the first time, he was hit by a car. Four months later, Gloria Vernon asked me to the spring formal, and the night of the dance she drank herself to death. Last year I joined the soccer team, didn't make varsity, but they were friendly enough. The first game after I joined, the bus overturned and every single one of them died. Then it was goddamn Ronnie, and today it was Heather! I Don't _tell_ me I'm not toxic, because even when I'm not pulling the trigger _I kill people!_ "

His voice had risen to a shout at the end as the leash on his temper frayed; the pity was chased off the Doctor's face by surprise and then sadness, which he smoothed over with a smile. "So everyone you get close to dies, is that it?"

"Yeah," Sam mumbled. "I'm toxic."

"Well, then, it's a good thing I can't die, isn't it?"

"You can't _die?_ "

"Nope. Time Lord. We regenerate." He winked. 

Sam felt hope blossom for the first time in years. He could go, see other people and places and things, spend time with a friend and not worry about them being killed, not have to worry about where his next meal was coming from or if he would freeze in the middle of the night. It sounded nice, it sounded _good_.

It wouldn't last forever. It couldn't, not with Sam's luck. But maybe - _maybe_ \- it would work for at least a few months, long enough to get the desire to live flowing through him again.

He took a deep breath. "Say I did want to come. What would I need to do?"

**Author's Note:**

> Lots to say here, so sorry if I'm not very coherent.
> 
> One: This fic was originally supposed to end after the werewolf. Sam saved the Doctor, the Doctor saw how guilty he felt over killing Ronnie and how harshly he was treated, and he offered Sam a way out. Obviously, that didn't happen.
> 
> Two: If I had to describe this version of Sam in one word, it would be 'desperate'. He's desperate for someone to pay attention to him after four and a half years of being ignored, bullied, or treated with fear; he's desperate for someone to validate him as a person worthy of common courtesy; he's desperate to tell someone about his lifestyle. Most of all, Sam is a teenage boy desperate to be rescued from a life of prostitution and misery but also depressed enough to feel like he isn't worth the effort it would take to save him.
> 
> Three: There is a lot missing. There's very little in the way of Sam's interaction with his classmates, there's little in the way of interaction with other people, there's little on Sam's emotional nuances. That was intentional, believe it or not - Sam's at the point where he lives in a state of willful ignorance about the way people treat him, which entails a lot of situational blindness. Anyone who hs gone through the trauma Sam has (dead family, social isolation, life of violence) would have a deadened emotional response; couple that with how teenage boys are rarely in touch with their feelings and you get repressed anger that flares unexpectedly and then subsides into nothing.
> 
> Four: I have a broader story planned. This is the beginning of a long arc that will have case fics, plotless visits to planets that exist only in my imagination, a bit of romance (not Doctor/Sam, though), scenes where Sam's unique genetic and soul makeup will be important, and other bits of unplotted surprise.
> 
> So, please! Review. Comment. Kudos. Whatever. I can't get better if I don't have feedback. :)


End file.
